The Soviet Union was founded on a fairytale. It was built on 20th-century magic called 'the planned economy', which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the penny-pinching lands of capitalism could never match. This book is about that moment in history, and how it came and went away.

Paperback edition of the bestselling history of the Soviet Union, which concentrates on the heady years of the late 1950s, when the Soviet dream appeared to be working. It's about a moment in history when the Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. 'Francis Spufford evokes the chaos with boundless comic sympathy and a piercing eye for historic detail.' Clive James